


funhouse mirrors

by dayevsphil



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Aromantic, Asexual Character, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M, Neurodiversity, Nonbinary Character, Other, sex work mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28463772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayevsphil/pseuds/dayevsphil
Summary: Phil hasn't had a crush before.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 115





	funhouse mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dnovep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dnovep/gifts).



> NOV!!!!!!!!! i loved writing this for u soooo much and i am so unbelievably grateful for ur patience on this! thank u!!!!!! i hope u like it!

It takes three and a half years for Phil to know exactly what Dan means to him. 

That's his own fault, he's aware. Repression is an old friend, a safety blanket that he wraps around his shoulders when things are uncertain, and maybe if he'd gone to therapy like Dan always wanted him to, he'd have figured it out sooner. But he didn't, so he doesn't.

Of course, he knows what they are to each other - flatmates, confidantes, gaming partners, shopping partners, life partners, friends, friends, friends, just _friends_ \- but those are all unspoken and obvious and have required absolutely zero introspection on Phil's part, so they're a lot easier to label.

It starts, as most things do, at the beginning: Dan on the threshold of Phil's flat, long hair dripping onto his shoulders and teeth making worry marks into his lower lip.

(Sometimes Phil thinks it starts before that. When he's alone and contemplating the nature of the universe, he starts to think about that one Plato theory. The two of them fit together so well, puzzle pieces of their broken edges slotting together in ways Phil didn't know was even an option for him, and sometimes it makes sense to think that they'd been split apart from one being at the beginning of time.

He wouldn't say any of that to Dan, though. Dan has enough trouble with the universe without Phil adding baseless theories to it.

He still thinks it. He still wonders. He still remembers introducing himself to Dan and feeling like they already knew each other.)

But it starts with Dan in his flat.

Dan had been hunting for a place to live so obsessively that he'd gone out in a storm just so Phil didn't give his spare room to someone else. There had been so much fear and defiance in his eyes and Phil had seen himself in it, had recognised that Dan wasn't afraid of the stranger whose home he was in so much as he was afraid of being asked to go back out in the rain.

It had been a bit like looking in a mirror to Phil's own past. The slumped shoulders and indented lips and layers of plaid were all so goddamn familiar that Phil had to second-guess if the déja vù was real or imagined.

(If Dan is a mirror, he's the kind that warps and distorts until you no longer recognise yourself. Whenever they talk about anything deeper than grocery lists and superheroes, Phil can see it. He sees all the ways they are the same and the ways that those similarities diverge, and he feels like he's lost in a funhouse. 

They never voice it, but Phil knows that Dan can see it too. There's this smile that he gets, all knowing and a bit sarcastic, whenever they find a new divergence.)

Lightning had streaked across Phil's only large window, and he made a rash decision when Dan flinched at it. He'd told Dan to stay without knowing anything about him except his name. They'd waited out the storm by playing video games, and then Dan had lived with him. 

Easy. Things had always been easy with Dan. Maybe that's why Phil never bothered to identify the swirly feelings that kept growing and growing until they took him over completely.

Until now, obviously. Now he gets it. He'd just been so lost for a while.

Maybe the funhouse mirror effect wouldn't be so good at luring Phil in if either of them could use a goddamn label consistently. Maybe, if Dan didn't pick up identities and discard them as easily as old jackets - _vegan_ lasted the least amount of time, even behind the single weekend that Dan dabbled in using only _she/her_ pronouns - or if Phil spent any time on self-reflection instead of picking something that sounded close enough - like _gay_ or _weird_ or a shrug if all else failed - then they might have been able to see each other clearly to begin with.

But Dan was on some kind of eternal journey of self-discovery and Phil would much rather swallow a bee than spend his free time examining his own thoughts and behaviours, so they keep seeing reflections in each other before realising they aren't the same.

(Like when Phil thought he'd finally found someone who knew exactly what he meant when he talked about the weird shit in his brain, but then Dan had gone on about the _correlation and comorbidity of autism and ADHD_ and Phil had gotten spooked. He'd just wanted to revel in the fact that Dan understood, just wanted to live in that camaraderie, but Dan had always liked using Words.)

As they get older together, Phil finds himself shrugging less. Dan's brow always furrows at a shrug, and if there's one thing about himself that he knows for a fact, it's that he likes making Dan happy. And Dan is meeting him halfway, too, trending towards umbrella terms as he gets more secure in his own identity, because he must know how twitchy a Wikipedia deep dive on specifics makes Phil.

Phil thinks things might have been easier if they were both what they seemed to be at first glance. If they were both just gay men who got on as well as they have from the first night, he's fairly sure they'd have already been well past the point of _friends_.

Friends is good. Phil likes being friends with Dan, moreso than he's liked being friends with anyone else he's ever met, but it's different with Dan. It's always different with Dan.

But Phil hadn't known he could even feel this particular thing until Dan came into his life. He'd had no way of understanding where his own complicated feelings were heading - not without looking inward, anyway, which he does as infrequently as possible - until it was too late.

It takes three and a half years for it to knock him over the head, and he wishes he could blame Dan for being the one with the mallet instead of his own oblivious repression.

All because he'd asked what Dan was working on. 

"Oh, you don't want to see this," Dan had laughed, angling his laptop screen down so that Phil couldn't sneak a peek even if he wanted to.

"Maybe I do," Phil had argued. His curiosity had always gotten the best of him - nosiness, Martyn called it, and said he'd gotten it from their mum - and since Dan hadn't seemed uncomfortable, he'd pushed. "You don't know unless you tell me, right?"

Dan had given him an amused look, eyes so big and sparkly under the loose curls of his fringe, and said, "I'm selling my nudes and trying to pick the best one to send to this bloke. Scandalous, sure, but not exactly a group activity."

"I'm a bloke," Phil had said. At Dan's expression, he'd added, "Sorta. Anyway, I think I know what's hot better than you do."

It hadn't been about seeing Dan naked. They'd lived together for so long without any air-con, he was more than used to seeing Dan's bits in the summertime. Phil had just wanted to help, and he was _bored_ , and Dan had been staring at his laptop for hours now. He'd just wanted to speed the process up so they could play Mario Kart.

"That's a terrible argument," Dan had said. "You wouldn't know aesthetic if it was the difference between life and death. I don't know how much your stupidly high libido will help you there."

Phil could have argued that point - his libido being higher than Dan's didn't mean it was _stupidly_ high - but they'd made fun of each other often enough for their funhouse-mirror-divergence surrounding sex. He hadn't been in the mood for the bickering just then.

"So come play Mario with me."

"I'm working."

"I'm bored."

"Sounds like a you problem." Dan's lips twitched, and then he made an exaggerated sigh of a noise. "You really want to help?"

When Phil had nodded like a bobblehead, eager to have his gaming partner back for the night, Dan had straightened his laptop out and clicked back into Photoshop. The program choice had seemed weird to Phil until he remembered, later, that Dan's face was out of focus.

"Okay," Phil had said, because his brain had shut completely down and that was the first thing his mouth had offered.

"So it's between these three," Dan had told him, cycling through the images with keyboard shortcuts and blissfully oblivious to whatever expression had made its home on Phil's face. "What do you think?"

Phil had swallowed hard, mouth as dry as a hangover, and picked one randomly. Dan had either trusted his judgment or - more likely - was just as tired of staring at his screen as Phil was. They'd played Mario Kart until their eyes hurt from being open too long, and then they'd gone to bed.

Not to sleep, at least for Phil. No, he'd gone to bed to stare at his ceiling and sort through all the warring things that were making his stomach hurt and try not to panic.

(Because it wasn't _new_ , attraction to Dan. Phil had felt it immediately, and he had continued to feel it, and he'd only stopped feeling it when he put Dan firmly in the _just friends_ category.

Which he'd done after the sex talk. The night they'd had a bit too much to drink and found another one of those divergences. And Phil had figured out that he could never be what Dan needed, couldn't be in a relationship ever, because he didn't feel the things he'd need to feel in order for Dan to want to have sex with him.

He hadn't felt it at the time, anyway.)

There was no real point in panicking. Nothing had to change. But Phil's anxiety and fear of missing out and the crush, the _crush_ he'd _finally_ gotten on someone not purposefully _totally_ unattainable, were all screaming at him that this was life-changing.

It's such a simple, stupid realization; Phil wants to fuck Dan and hang out with Dan in equal measure. Unprecedented, but not bad.

Not bad, anyway, so long as Phil figures out how to use his words for this.

\--

It doesn't even take three and a half _days_ before Dan notices that something is off with Phil.

Phil has a good poker face, but it has never seemed to work on Dan. It's annoying, and it's useful, and it's part of what makes them such good life partners and flatmates and friends and all that nonsense, because Phil can try all he wants to hide how he feels but Dan _will_ get to the bottom of it eventually.

"Alright," Dan says, hands on his hips like a caricature of a frowning mum. "You're being weird. Is this about me selling those photos? Because if it is, you're such a fucking hypocrite, you watch porn all the time, and -"

"I don't care that you're selling photos," Phil says before Dan can get into a proper strop. He can be a conversation bulldozer when he puts his mind to it, and Phil doesn't need a lecture about something that's not even the issue. "You really think I'd give a shit? As long as you're being safe about it, obviously."

"Obviously I am."

"Then obviously I don't care."

"Then what is it? Because something is _weird_ here," Dan presses.

"Just dealing with -" Phil gestures to his own head with a grimace, "- stuff. I dunno if I'm ready to tell you all of it."

The wary, defensive energy that Dan had brought into the kitchen with him dissipates, and his frown turns concerned in a way that makes something twist in Phil's stomach.

"You can tell me anything," Dan says.

"I know." Phil looks back down at the vegetables he's chopping for dinner. 

"I might be able to help," Dan says, gently pressing in that way that he learned from therapy. Sometimes Phil resents it. 

(Not this time. Tonight, Phil kind of wants Dan to drag the truth from him, kicking and screaming as it might be. At least then it'll be a shared burden and not just on Phil's shaking, inexperienced shoulders.)

"I know," Phil repeats. He doesn't know how to say anything else right now.

"You don't have to say anything right now if you don't want to, obviously, I just - I worry, y'know? When things are weird?"

Phil _knows_. Dan is not exempt from his own funhouse version of anxiety, even though he spills his guts to a stranger once a month.

So Phil addresses the veg when he says, "It's just new, is all. I've got all this… stuff. And it's new. And I have to think about what it means. And I hate that."

"I know," Dan echoes softly. In Phil's peripheral vision, he sees Dan lean against their counter like he's settling in for a long conversation. "But you don't have to do it all by yourself, and you gotta remember that you don't have to come to a decision all at once."

(Those, according to Dan, are Phil's main issues with Words. Phil is rather more inclined to blame a grand ancestral tradition of repression.)

"I've never felt like this before," Phil tells the carrots.

"Explain it to me," Dan offers. 

"I know what the feelings are, Daniel," says Phil. Maybe it's more snappy than Dan deserves, but he doesn't like being treated like he doesn't understand emotions just because they're further out of reach for him. "I just don't know what it means for me going forward."

"Alright. What're the feelings, then?" 

"Er," Phil says eloquently. This isn't the most awkward conversation they've ever had, but it's still past Phil's threshold for sincere emotional connection. He figures that he can tell Dan what's going on and then they can move past it together or figure something out or _something_.

(Phil is desperate to blurt it out, honestly. He'd rather know where he stands than live in limbo.

And Dan will understand. Even if Dan doesn't feel the same way, even if things are awkward for a bit, Dan will get it. Things will be better once Phil says it.)

Dan is waiting quietly for him instead of continuing to use his Psych 101 conversation starters, and that's what gets Phil's tongue to loosen. Just the knowledge that his best friend and partner in so many things will make himself be patient for Phil's comfort.

"I think you're hot," he says. 

That makes Dan laugh. It's surprised and soft, nothing that makes Phil want to crawl back into his shell. "Well, thank you. I think I knew that already."

"And I like you."

"I like you too, Phil," Dan says easily. "What's new about that?"

Put that way, Phil supposes that nothing is new. His feelings for Dan haven't changed, exactly - he's just looking at them in a funhouse mirror now, seeing the divergences, wanting it to be reality.

That metaphor might take some explaining, though, so Phil just says, "I like you and I think you're hot and it's all gotten combined into a whirly elastic band ball of feelings and I think what's happening is that I've got a crush on you."

Phil's face feels like it's burning bright enough to signal aeroplanes.

He feels like he's fucking thirteen or something, palms sweating against the handle of their best knife as he waits for Dan to have some kind of reaction, and he _hates_ that feeling. 

(In so many ways, Phil's development is behind his peers. This had always been part of that, for him. Just another quirk. Until Dan had found the labels for it all, and then he'd had to deal with the _aromantic-ness_ of it all.)

"Oh," is what Dan starts with. Phil considers leaping out their tiny kitchen window until Dan's big hands land on his shoulders and gently turn him around. His big brown eyes search Phil's face for - something. Phil has never known what Dan is looking for when he looks at Phil like this. He doesn't know if his face is doing the right things. Eventually, Dan says, "And you're sure."

"I'm definitely sure," Phil says, prickly again. "It freaked me out, Dan."

"You haven't had a crush like that, right?" Dan asks, but he doesn't seem to expect an answer, because he keeps talking. Conversation bulldozer. "Like, anything serious. I have. It's really fucking scary, yeah?"

"It _is_ ," Phil laughs. He tries to shrug off that defensiveness and anxiety to give Dan a half-hearted grin. "So, that's why weird. Not because I think it's bad to sell your nudes."

Dan hums thoughtfully, his hands still steady on Phil's shoulders and his eyes still searching for something in Phil's face. After a long moment, he grins back.

"Even if it's your boyfriend that's selling nudes?"

Something like hope flutters frantically in Phil's chest, and he bites down on his lip so he doesn't do something stupid like ask what _boyfriend_ means, really, since he's never been or had one. "Especially then," he says. "Because then I get to profit off it too."

Dan honks a laugh and smacks Phil's arm.

(But then he kisses him, too, so Phil thinks he's done alright.)

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to nov again for the prompt and to chicken for the hype read!!!!!! ily both!!!!!!


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